Both the North and South have put out their accounts
of the recent fruitless negotiations. Mr. Lincoln's tone is very calm and assured, and to Mr. Seward it is, as it is right that it should be, that of a master. The Richmond papers are furious beyond even the ordinary level of Richm mid fury. The Confederate Peace Com- missioners apparently hoped for an immediate cessation of hostilities, with a combination between North and South to maintain the Monroe doctrine, —apparently against Mexico. The hope they held out to Mr. Lincoln was that from the friendly spirit thus excited something might "turn up" to his advantage. The North of course declined entirely any terms short of recognition of the Union under the old constitution, with its impending con- stitutional amendment against slavery,—terms impossible as yet. Mr. Davis turned the whole negotiation,—as we pointed out that he must have intended to do,—to. good account in fanning anew the old war spirit. He got together a fierce war meeting in Richmond on the 6th inst., wherein he addressed the people in very much the same spirit in which last autumn he promised to beat "the Yankee spaniels" as they deserved, that he would teach "the insolent enemy who had treated our propositions with con- tumely that in that conference in which he had so plumed himself with arrogance he was indeed talking to his masters ;" and added that "the gallant Beauregard would cause Sherman's march across Georgia to be his last." This is like the pledge to the Georgians that the retreat of Sherman from Atlanta should be "more disastrous than Napoleon's retreat from Moscow." If the battle can be won by big words Mr. Davis will win it.
